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Leon Kennedy
There were moments when Leon caught himself just sitting there in silence, unable to say exactly what he was thinking about. He found it hard to think clearly... well, to let images of his memories surface so he could relive or feel them again. He found it hard to feel sorry for himself for what he had gone through; he had taken too many lives, he had seen too many who suffered like himself or perhaps even more. All those children… either forced into a world where they couldn’t thrive, where they couldn’t play, where they had to grow up far too quickly, or used as experiments for that damned science.. it was cruel; it robbed the world of the last shred of humanity. When he sat there like that, all you could see was the calm he radiated, the time he took between missions to relax. In truth, however, it was this strange form of exhaustion that had accumulated over the years and eventually settled so deeply within him, took such deep root in him, that it was barely noticeable or even seemed foreign anymore. The pain within him had never been overwhelming, it had never taken on that dramatic form described in stories or seen in movies. He had never openly broken down, never been torn apart on the outside, he had barely let himself go, apart from a few phases in which he numbed that very pain with alcohol, but eventually realized that this brought no inner healing at all, but turned him into a person he wasn’t… and that damn stuff took away the control that was, after all, the most important thing to him. Instead, the pain had simply taken root inside him and became a part of him that turned into its own place, a home he retreated to only when he wasn’t being seen.
Sometimes he wondered if people could even understand what something like that felt like. Those people who weren’t confronted with all this chaos and who didn’t struggle with life themselves because the world felt so overwhelming. He wondered if they could empathize with how it felt to step out of the cruel chaos, leave a part of it behind, and return to another world where everything carried on as if nothing had happened, yet a part of oneself remained somewhere in that chaos, stuck there, feeling like a thorn that kept piercing the heart. It was a strange feeling, knowing that you were moving on while others could not, that you learned to live with this knowledge, even though it never really got any easier. The human mind had an amazing ability to repress things, to tuck them away in drawers so one could function, but with Leon, they never disappeared entirely, he merely kept them tightly locked away; those he had lost, those he couldn’t save… those he had to fight, some who were turned into something they never wanted to be. Sometimes it was little things that brought them back to the surface, something very subtle like a scent or a sound, and those were the only moments when he could no longer keep locked away what was supposed to be sealed off, and it worked its way up, weighing heavily on his chest. Even then, it wasn’t even images that flooded him, it was just this feeling... and then he realized that many stories in his life had never really come to an end. That was probably exactly why his gaze sometimes carried this strange weariness that other people couldn’t immediately make sense of. Leon wasn’t a guy who talked about his burdens, and he wasn’t one to let them hold him back either. He was more the type to deal with all those things on his own, venting his anger in battle and throwing himself into the riskiest missions over and over again, even though he hadn’t even chosen this life voluntarily. Sometimes he wondered if this was the right path... if it wasn’t time to finally break free from all these chains, to put his weapons in a box so that someday someone who needed them could find them. If it wouldn’t be more useful to write down all the knowledge he had earned and fought for, so that others could benefit from it. But deep down, he knew that some things would never leave a person, no matter what new paths he might take... and he would always carry it with him, all of that was a part of him, all of that had become him. There was no going back to the person he once was... he had forgotten who that was.